Choose Your Targeted Search Terms

Begin thinking about your long-term search marketing strategies. The only way you can target a search term is to use it two or more times on a page.

Start with your homepage, your most important opportunity to succeed in your online competitive environment. Choose five or six search terms that you want to target on your home page.

Target more than six terms only if you’re sure that it’s mission-critical for seven to ten terms to be targeted on your home page. Ask yourself if those additional search terms could be more appropriately targeted some other landing page on your site — on a category page, for example. Ten targeted search terms on a single page is almost always too many.

Identify the search terms that — because they tell the search engines to send you people who are looking for what you’re offering — are potentially the most valuable to you.

• Do your targeted search terms support your business goals and strategies?
• How well do these search terms correspond to the specific needs of your target audiences?
• Which search terms will your audiences use when they’re looking for what you offer? Are you sure?
• How do your search terms compare with the search terms being targeted by your competition?

Ask your Web designer to try to:

• use each of your targeted search terms in H1 or H2 heading tags at least once.
• put each of your targeted search terms in bold tags at least once.
• use your targeted search terms in anchor text (links).

Keep in mind that as part of your social marketing you will use these same targeted search terms to find bloggers and others who influence your target audiences. You will be using blog search engines and directories, for example, as well as specialized search tools for podcasts and other audio and video related to your business or organization.